Louisiana Voice

Some good news for Louisiana for a change.

Or at least good non-news.

Wall Street 24/7, that online service that provides up-to-date statistics on everything from poverty and obesity to which cars to buy and which to avoid, has released a list of the 15 states with the biggest spikes in UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS over the past three years.

It’s one of those bad lists and for once, Louisiana is not on it. Neither, for that matter is our neighbors to the east, Mississippi or Alabama, or Arkansas to the north.

But hey, it’s a different story for Texas, led by those Republican Sens. Ted “Cancun” Cruz and John Cornyn and Gov. Greg “we’re gonna eliminate rape” Abbott. The Lone Star State shows up with the 12^th-highest gain in unemployment claims with an increase of 7.4 percent.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Texas also has the nation’s 10^th highest overall unemployment rate (4.3 percent) and the country’s 12^th highest poverty rate (14.2 percent).

You’d think that Abbott, instead of attempting to abolish women’s rights, limiting voting for people of color, setting school curricula, and blaming mental health for mass shootings (even as his state continues to cut back on the availability of mental health treatment facilities) all while focusing on a possible White House run, would be attempting to improve the economic condition of his constituents.

Other Republican-dominated states who made the list were Oklahoma (8^th biggest increase in claims at 15.1 percent and 8^th– highest poverty rate at 15.3 percent), and Missouri (it’s three-year increase in unemployment claims ranking 7^th with a gain of 27.8 percent and the nation’s 19^th highest poverty rate at 13.0 percent). Missouri’s senators are John Hawley and Roy Blount.

And which state do you think is number 5 with an increase in unemployment claims of 38.4 percent? Why, none other than Kentucky, home of Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. You’d think they’d be trying to do something about the state’s 5^th highest poverty rate (16.6 percent).

And yes, there were some notably Democrat-led states on that list and some other red states that were not on it which, I suppose, really means nothing in the overall scheme of things because no one senator or governor can control the economy just as no one president can control the price of gasoline (though you’d never know it by listening to those who would blame Biden for fuel prices. And the Keystone XL pipeline wasn’t closed because it had never opened and it was never going to be used for domestic production in the first place). And of course, the price of everything else is tied directly to fuel costs because of the costs of transporting goods. But when oil companies reported record profits last quarter, something doesn’t add up.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is to illustrate how we’ve lost the ability to work together to solve our problems. When someone like McConnell openly admits that his number one objective is to block every proposal put forward by a Democratic president, something is terribly wrong.

And no matter how you may try to spin it, the federal deficit is directly to blame for the rate of inflation in this country. It took a few years to catch up, but you just cannot increase the federal debt by $4 trillion and not expect it to have an effect down the road. And that was done by a Republican Congress and a Republican president. Finally, you cannot continue to ship jobs overseas and not expect it to impact unemployment rates. And you cannot expect the easy accessibility of assault weapons not to have an impact on the murder rate in this country.

Eisenhower was right in warning Americans against the increasing power and influence of the military-industrial complex. And now, with Congress and most state legislatures bought by the special interests, it appears that it’s too late.

What do we have to offset the influence of evangelicals, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), future US Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s 1971 MANIFESTO (written for the US Chamber of Commerce), the Goldwater/Nixon SOUTHERN STRATEGY, or the NRA? Neither the ACLU nor The Southern Poverty Law Center, can approach the financial resources of those extreme right-wing organizations. The Democrats cannot hope to match the support the Republicans get from corporate America.

Neither party is immune from the trappings of power and money, but overall, I’d say the Republicans pretty much have a monopoly on the big bucks.

For comparative strengths, look no further than the manner in which a Supreme Court nominee was blocked by the Republicans in the last months of the Obama administration but rushed through literally in the final days of Trump’s term of office. Though patently unfair, the Democrats were powerless to stop McConnell and company from having their way.

While much attention has been given, rightfully so, to the leak of the pending Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade, a decision that has flown under the radar but which has the potential of being far more sinister may have doomed innocent prisoners to execution.

In Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones, the 6^th Amendment is literally STRUCK DOWN.

Justice Sonia Sotomayer, in writing her dissent to the opinion, said, “The court’s decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.” She said the court negates the federal courts’ authority to safeguard that right and “reduces to rubble” many 6^th Amendment constitutional rights.

Indigent defendants in particular will be hurt the most by the ruling because they are generally defended by court-appointed public attorneys who are underpaid, understaffed, and in many cases, unmotivated. But the argument of ineffective counsel has now been taken away by an out-of-touch Supreme Court.

Don’t be at all surprised if, barely two years after being declared unconstitutional, the court revisits and ultimately reinstates SPLIT JURY VERDICTS, even in capital cases.